Geotagging Imagery and Video

IsWHERE is a log of my thoughts, reflections, and news/blog links on the emergence of image and video geospatial tagging. On May5th this year, I opened a second blog to deal with more detailed aspects of tools for FalconView and TalonView can be found at RouteScout. Trends I want to try and follow are the various disruptions resulting from spatial smart-phones, how many GPS devices are out there, smart-cameras, and other related news. And yes, I have a business interest in all of this. My company Red Hen has been pioneering this sort of geomedia for more than a decade.

So beyond a personal blog, I also provide a link to IsWHERE a shareware tool created by Red Hen Systems to readily place geoJPEG or geotagged imagery and soon GEM full motion media kept on your own computer(s) into Google Earth/Map from your File Manager media selection. Works great for geotagged images from Nikon, Ricoh, Sony, iPHONE, Android and all geo-smartphones that can create geotagged images. IsWhere - read about it

IsWhere Visitors

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Its been many months since my last posting speculating on the near future of Google's Android. Well a lot has happened.

This summary of a number of other articles I feel indicate that Android is quickly going to emerge as a significant smart phone platform.. It is an open source design from the get go although I think I would prefer my Android phone's version to be directly supported by Google rather than those out there that may try to fragment its normal footprint. Indeed we need competition but too much fragments the opportunity for the developers who provide all the "apps" that fuel your always with you, always on, always connected communications thingie...

But be aware, these smartphone statistics can really be a fools quest. Primarily what is going on world-wide is not what is happening in the US particularly. Why, well the US got off to a rather slow start as compared to Europe or the Far East. It is also more fragmented in how 3G has arrived. As such its mixture of smartphones is far different that the rest of the world's at this time. But that too is changing given the acceration of the US adoption and leadership in touch-based phone desigs: iPhone, Droid, RIM, and others.

Fall 2009 BIG Four Worldwide Smartphone Players

Nokia 39%

RIM 20%

Apple 17%

HTC 5%

Fall 2009 BIG Four US Smartphone Players

RIM 41%

Apple 25%

Microsoft 19%

Palm 7.8

SO one of the all important topics is not just how many handsets were made or sold, but the actual "apps" traffic and its related economy that results in after-sales revenues. Apple is the biggest dog at the moment with its . But I will speculate that if the emereging Android handsets have some reasonable consistency in design and function, many of the sweetest cherries on Apple's App-store will be snarfed up in the Android community.

Perhaps the biggest Android bombshell of the year came on the eve of the CTIA Wireless IT & entertainment conference, when Verizon Wireless locked arms with Google. That partnership has produced two phones so far: the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris. The year ended with fresh speculation that Google would be launching its "own" Android phone, free from carrier constraints, though it is unclear whether this will be a major disruption or just another new Android phone.

Why it was significant: It's important to put all of the buzz around Android in perspective. It is not entirely surprising that Strategy Analytics predicted a 900 percent growth rate for the operating system in 2009, given that there were so few Android phones on the market at the beginning of this year. Nonetheless, the evolution of Android has been remarkable. By courting numerous carrier and handset OEM partners, Google has broadened the reach of its open-source Android effort and positioned itself for growth at a time when more consumers are shifting from feature phones to smartphones with data plans. It remains to be seen though how Google's rumored Nexus One phone fits into the company's overall wireless effort. The device could represent a major strategy shift for the Internet search giant, or just the latest flagship Android phone. Whatever happens with the "Google phone," it's clear that Google's phone ambitions took off this year. Read more: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/2009-year-review-android-gains-mainstream-acceptance/2009-12-15#ixzz0aop0d6Mn

Citing growing smartphone adoption--sales grew 20 percent this year--as well as the proliferation of app stores behind the surge, ABI anticipates the iPhone will remain the leading platform for mobile software, although its share of the overall application market will contract during the latter stages of the forecast period--the forecast declares Android will benefit most from the upcoming boom, increasing from 11 percent of total application downloads this year to 23 percent five years from now. "This rapid growth is driven by the mass adoption of the Android OS by both vendors and consumers from 2009 onwards," says ABI wireless research associate Bhavya Khanna in a prepared statement. "There are now more than 14 phones that run the Android OS, and many more will launch in 2010. This, coupled with the rollout of application stores from both smartphone vendors and network operators, will see the iPhone's share of the total market shrink between 2010 and 2014Read more: http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/mobile-app-downloads-forecast-reach-5-billion-2014/2009-12-21#ixzz0aoY7DHSj

And my WAG for Estimated Smartphone or OSed mobiles versus all other mobile phones New and Replacement Inventory in the US in 2009

According to the Device Dashboard, a new online tool providing data about the relative number of active devices running a given version of Android, 54.2 percent of smartphones currently run Android 1.6, 27.7 percent run Android 1.5 and 14.8 percent run 2.0.1. (Android 2.0 runs on 2.9 percent of devices, and 1.1 runs on just 0.3 percent.) But with so many new Android devices in all shapes and sizes expected in 2010, the question isn't whether the platform will grow too big for developers to ignore--it's whether it will grow too big for them to manage.

In November 2009 AdMob estimated the US distribution of the Android handsets was approximately:

The network spec means that 3G is a go on T-Mobile but not on AT&T; onlyEDGE on AT&T. Google will be making the Nexus One available to only thosewho are invited, by the company. But there is also hope that T-Mobile will beselling the Nexus One directly to anyone who wants one. When is anyone’s guess.Source: Engadget

Friday, June 05, 2009

The Android platform appears poised for considerable growth in 2009, but some hurdles for the platform remain. Google’s senior director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin, announced on May 27th that its Android platform will appear on at least 18 handset models, designed by 8 or 9 OEMs, in 2009. While this widespread market adoption marks a significant milestone for Android, it could also pose the greatest threat to the platform’s future. Open source platforms, including Android, have gained considerable momentum in the mobile handset market because they are royalty-free and allow customization from OEMs and mobile network operators (MNOs). However, that ability to alter and customize the platform source code can result in the development of incompatible variants of the platform, or fragmentation. Platform fragmentation increases the cost of development and negates many of the benefits provided by an open source community.

The Android platform has the potential to carve out a substantial share of the smartphone market, as IMS Research projects the Android platform will ship on over 43 million handsets in 2014. However, to achieve and sustain that share of the market, the OHA and Google will need to address this issue of fragmentation. A fragmented Android platform would result in compatibility problems for Android applications and would ultimately push the cost of continued development of the platform to individual OEMs or MNOs, rather than the OHA as a whole. Such increased development costs and a fragmented application portfolio would make competing with other open source platforms an uphill battle for Android.

Can you feel the tingling in the air? If you haven’t found it already,you will. This is going to be the summer of love. I am talking, of course, about smartphone love. The serenades have already begun for the June 6 launch of the Palm Pre. Next week, Apple will reveal it’s next iPhone (you know MG is going to get one). Blackberry might come out with its second Storm by summer’s end. And the lovefest will continue throughout the year with launch after launch of new Android phones as well. It will be practically nonstop. I hope you can handle it.

These aren’t just attractive new playthings. They represent something much deeper and more meaningful. They represent a major transition in both the mobile phone industry and in mobile computing. The iPhone paved the way, but now the Web phones are ready to take over the world. Their relative numbers compared to basic feature phones may still be small, but their mindshare and profits are large. Already, the iPhone and Blackberry Web phones are gobbling up a majority of the industry’s profits.

Why? It has nothing to do with making phone calls. The Web in your pocket means you always have something to read, you are always connected to your digital network, and you can always reach out and Tweet someone or poke them or send them an email. And if all that fails, you can still call. But the problem with actually speaking to someone is that you can only carry on one conversation at a time. With a Web phone, you can keep track of your entire conversation stream.

It seems that the only smartphone out there is the iPhone or Pre at the moment by the pundants who Twitter-gab and blog-snarf. But here is heads-up.... more next post below..

HEY! The world's largest computer makers list starts with Nokia, followed by HP, Dell, Apple, Acer, Lenovo, RIM, and Toshiba. The count includes all PC sales, the PDA and smartphone over four quarters, starting from October 2007 to September 2008. As soon as smartphones have been included in the total number of computers sold in 2008, Nokia has received the title of the world's largest computer maker in the world. As it turns out, the company accounts for about 13.8% of market, yet only its smartphones have been included in this count, while the Nokia mobile phones and Nokia Internet Tablets have been left aside. Softpedia

In addition to the Palm Pre and the maybes of iPhone, Nokia's N97 is quietly being released not in one or three countries but 75! Whay is this noteable? Well the N97 is really quite a work of technology. It is not a shift in design nor revolutionary interface but is Nokia's steady dominate progression on what makes a smartphone smart. Indeed it too has a touch screen, it also has a QWERTY slide out keyboard, heaps of memory, a kick-butt five Mp camera, video, and more! And it happily multi-tasks. A very detailed review of Nokia's latest additon to its smartphone portfolio can be gotten at all about symbian.

The n97, an open-source Symbian-based smartphone, also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card. The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however. The Nokia N97 is expected to ship in Europe during the first half of 2009, with an estimated price of 550 euros ($695). Cnet Dec08

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff did some anlysis on Spartphones and shifting technical advantages. When you look at sales of the iPhone or Blackberry as a percentage of total cell phone sales, they are still a tiny smidgen of the one billion phones estimated to be sold this year. But when you look at what really matters—their share of revenues or operating profits—the picture looks a lot different.

In a note, Modoff writes: “Increasingly, the smartphone vendors are claiming more of the industry’s profit dollars even as the pool of profitability stabilizes or shrinks.” Thanks to the success of the highly-profitable iPhone, Apple’s share of industry operating profits went from 3 percent in 2007 to 20 percent in 2008 and will grow again to an estimated 31 percent in 2009. RIM, maker of the Blackberry, is doing even better, increasing its estimated share of industry profits from 8 percent (2007) to 19 percent (2008) to 35 percent (2009). So adding those two together, Apple and RIM are expected to account for an incredible 66 percent of industry profits this year.

Meanwhile, once-dominant Nokia is seeing its estimated share of industry profits drop from 64 percent (2007) to 57 percent (2008) to 32 percent (2009). The only other major manufacturer to grow its profit share is Samsung, from 14 prcent last year to an estimated 19 percent this year. (A note on methodology: These numbers take into account operating losses at companies such as Motorola and Palm, and the total adds up to 100 only when you subtract their losses, which are expressed as negative percentages).

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The "Smartphone" Is Dead: Long Live Smart Phones And Smart GadgetsThis is the first document in the "Smart Mobile Devices" series.by Ian Fogg with Michelle de Lussanet, Laura Wiramihardja

Forrester spoke with leading mobile firms, including executives from Apple, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia, Palm and Research In Motion (RIM). Those executives identified three categories that typically indicate a phone is smart, such as whether the phone has the ability to install new applications, the use of particular operating system software and whether a phone has features such as GPS, Wi-Fi, camera, MP3 player or Web browsing capabilities. Apple's and Google's arrival in the mobile market is causing knock-on effects throughout the market and is opening up opportunities. All mobile handsets are becoming smarter and Internet-capable. Yesterday's smart high-end phone is today's midrange phone and tomorrow's entry-level phone. The "smartphone" category is no longer useful as all phones become smart. Instead, we propose three new frameworks to segment the smart mobile device market: openness and extensibility; consumption and creation; utility and entertainment. All mobile strategies must adapt now: Consumer electronics makers must decide on their response to widely available smarter phones and the mobile Internet; handset makers must leverage software to play the mobile Internet game and differentiate long term; media, finance, retail, and other Internet companies' strategies must exploit mobile opportunities now or lose ground to faster rivals. But the mobile market will remain fragmented with no single platform — no Windows PC equivalent — anytime soon on mobile devices. Therefore, mobile strategists must analyze their target consumers carefully before embarking on large mobile investments. The report says nearly all mid-range phones now have core features that were in the past reserved for smartphones, essentially rendering the term “smartphone” meaningless. The report cites a JupiterResearch European Mobile Forecast from July 2008 that showed that by 2013, nearly 98 percent of all phones in Western Europe will come equipped with multi-megapixel cameras. According to the report, the mobile market will continue to fragment with new operating systems and software. While the report acknowledges the importance of hardware, it appears software will be the differentiator of the future.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

In aggregate around one in eight in the US have a smart phone. When only new handsets are looked over three times as many porportionally selected a smart phone?AT&T Touts More Smartphone Users

By Andrew BergWirelessWeek - May 15, 2009

AT&T today announced a new ad campaign that will highlight the carrier’s relatively high number of smartphone subscribers. In a press release on the company’s Web site, AT&T cited "independent market research" that shows twice as many smartphone users have chosen AT&T over any other U.S. carrier. AT&T said a new TV spot features a businessman e-mailing with his boss and sending files on a bus that’s morphed into a harried workplace.

The idea communicated is that twice as many smartphone users have chosen AT&T because with AT&T, they have confidence they can always stay connected. The new ads will begin running over the weekend. Until recently, AT&T had claimed to be the nation’s largest wireless carrier. However, Verizon Wireless recently acquired Alltel, and subsequently an additional 13.2 million customers. In its first-quarter earnings, Verizon reported 86.6 million total subscribers, while AT&T had 78.2 million.

comScore was the research firm responsible for showing that AT&T in March had 11.8 million smartphone customers, which was more than double the 5.1 million that the combined Verizon Wireless-Alltel unit had and 47 percent of U.S. smartphone customers overall, according to a Wall Street Journal report. “We’ve taken integrated devices mainstream and nearly a third of our postpaid customers use one,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, in a press release.

AT&T said it expects total capital expenditures to be $17 billion to $18 billion in 2009, with more than three-quarters of that supporting mobility and data.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The market for portable navigation devices (PNDs) is so low that companies are re-thinking their entire business models. Companies such as TomTom, Garmin, Navigon, and others have seen sales drop to record lows. With $30 PNDs soon to be a reality, companies are trying to see if it makes sense to continue to offer product lines. While companies struggle to find answers to counter a worldwide economic meltdown, strong competitors like Google are swooping in to offer similar services at no cost to battered consumers.

Is Google the Evil Empire?

Because Google believes navigation should be free to its users, the web portal giant is perceived to be a major threat to companies offering paid products and services. “Google is threatening to everyone. They leverage the strength of their ad revenue,” said Michael Dobson, TeleMapics president.

Dobson also believes that local search is rarely a satisfying experience for the end user. “Nokia bought Navteq in part to make the mobile local search market a reality. If they can’t do that, they won’t make half the money they should,” he said.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Its likelythe "best" smartphone is and will remain for some time yet, the best "smartphone". What remains interesting is that Nokia "smartphones" are selling at a pace of at least 5 million new phnones a month. And where is Android... back in the pack. If Google's only interst is in a subsidy for Android to allow more advertisement on mobile-web, then it might be a while before makes it big?

"The number of iPhones out there outnumber Android phones by nearly 20 to one (21 million iPhones have been sold to date, compared to estimates of about one million for the G1). Given these ratios, the disparity in Web usage measured by Admob makes sense. As more Android phones are introduced, that should help its numbers."

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Roger McNamee and I have two things in common. One: I desperately need a haircut. Two: I’ve officially given up on the dream of one-device-that-can-rule-them-all. In this video, McNamee shows off his famously unruly locks and his famous Batman-like utility belt, in which he carries at least two iPhones, a Palm Pre, a Centro, a G1 and a Blackberry. In the clip, he’s telling me the Palm Pre won’t replace all of them, but it’ll come the closest. All I was thinking was “A keyboard and a good browser?! The Palm Pre will solve all my problems. When and where can I get one? My precious…my precious…” Similarly, as the Pre’s release date gets closer, experts are getting in a tizzy about the upcoming “super smart phone” wars, which will ostensibly create a new golden age of competing options for consumers. But reading Walt Mossberg’s excellent compare-and-contrast of them all, I couldn’t help getting more and more jaded that this perfect device doesn’t exist and never will. Android has a great UI, but so far bad hardware. Microsoft and Blackberry are outdated in a lot of ways. The iPhone lacks a keyboard and is tied to AT&T. And Palm’s Pre looks great, but it’s still a Hail Mary play that could disappoint.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

is the third consecutive report from Berg Insight analysing the latest trends on the worldwide market

for GNSS technology in mobile handsets.

André Malm

Technology development enabling GPS integration in mass-market handsets was driven by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) E911 emergency call mandates requiring all US mobile operators to provide high-accuracy location of emergency callers. While the GSM operators opted for network-based location technologies such as U-TDOA or RF fingerprinting, the CDMA and iDEN operators chose to use the handset-based GPS location technology for locating emergency callers. This has led to rapidly increasing penetration of GPS in iDEN and CDMA handsets in North America. Emergency call location regulation is being introduced in other regions as well. Canada has also chosen to stipulate location accuracy requirements as in the US, while no such rules are yet in place in Japan or in Europe where Cell-ID-type location accuracy is enough for compliance.

Although the first GSM handsets with integrated GPS were launched already in the late1990’s, broader availability of consumer-oriented handsets with GPS did not appear until late 2006, primarily in Japan. In other parts of the world, the major handset and smartphone vendors commenced rollout of a growing number of models, mainly to address the growing interest in commercial location-based services. The number of GPS-enabled handset models available on worldwide markets outside Japan has increased from about 40 at the end of 2007, to more than 130 at the end of Q1-2009. Sales of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets grew to about 78 million units in 2008, up from 28 million devices the previous year. Berg Insight estimates that shipments of GPS-enabled GSM/WCDMA handsets will grow to 770 million units in 2014, representing an attach rate of 55 percent. Including handsets based on other air interface standards such as CDMA and iDEN, GPS-enabled handsets sales are estimated to reach about 960 million, or 60 percent of total handset shipments in 2014.

The cellular and connectivity chipset industry is going through a phase of consolidation and strategic change of focus following increasing competition, technology developments and changing customer demands. In 2008, NXP Semiconductors and STMicroelectronics (ST) formed a joint venture for wireless semiconductors that barely commenced operations before a new deal between ST and Ericsson to merge with Ericsson Mobile Platforms was announced. The new 50/50 joint venture – ST-Ericsson – started operations in February 2009. Moreover, in early 2009, the GPS specialist NemeriX filed for bankruptcy and the connectivity chipset vendor CSR announced its plans to merge with the GPS developer SiRF.

Handset software and applications are becoming more important as handset performance improves and new functionality is being added. Especially smartphone operating systems are receiving more attention from handset manufacturers, mobile network operators, application developers and last but not least users. Smartphones are devices that support installation of native third party applications. Most smartphones also allow full multitasking, enabling users to run multiple applications at once, including background applications. Spurred by Apples success, most major handset vendors have now announced or launched on-device application stores that allow users to download applications and content directly to their handsets. More and more of these applications have some kind of support for GPS location.

Chipset vendors are developing a variety of solutions targeting various segments. Products include GPS modules, standalone GPS chipsets, host-based GPS chipsets, multi-mode chipsets, integrated GPS cores and software-based GPS receivers. GPS technology for handsets has matured greatly, offering much better performance in terms of sensitivity, power consumption, size and price than was possible a few years ago. Furthermore, the OMA SUPL A-GPS standard has enabled lower cost deployment of A-GPS services that ensure a better and more consistent user experience necessary for the consumer market. The SUPL standard allows cost efficient deployment of A-GPS services that reduce the time-to-first-fix, lowers power consumption and enhances the sensitivity of GPS receivers.

New business models have also become possible, ranging from hosted services for operators, to services deployed by handset vendors for end-users that cannot get similar services from their network operator yet. Handset vendors are also starting to adopt hybrid location technologies that combine GPS with other wireless and sensor-based technologies, including Wi-Fi positioning, accelerometers, gyroscopes or electronic compasses.

While Google chose to be vague, Yahoo was completely transparent. It provided the following additional stats on Flickr: Photos/videos uploaded daily: 3 million (implies 90 million a month) Photos that are public: 50%Photos that are tagged: 30% Geo-tagged photos: 110 millionNumber of unique tags: 38 million Amount of traffic that comes from search engines: 75%

Saturday, April 04, 2009

RIM has finally sold its 50 millionth phone so they should feel like celebrating and make some special BlackBerry to mark the occasion. RIM has also announced the number of its current user base which has reached 25 million. 3.9 million were added in the last quarter and we’re probably going to see even more Berries sold in this quarter. The last quarter brouight in $3.46 billion which is 24.5% more than the previous quarter. What about you? Are you going to buy a BlackBerry soon?

Friday, March 20, 2009

Whow, that did not take long... comparison of the Smartphone OS's: iPhone OS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, S60. What I personally find interesting is that the comparison is quite US orientated in that in that the dominate Smartphone OS, Symbian, trails in sort of last on the list. Why? Well the US absolutley lags in application of 3G.. heck Australia has already moved their nation to 3.5G. Nokia has more 3G phones out there by some will suggest a factor of 10. What is really going on here?

IMHO Nokia remains a one-handed smartphone solution where as the other smartphones rely on two handed control. Is a two-handed smartphone really any smarter or is simply larger. So if you are in your car with a two-handed solution, well, be aware! iPhone lifted the game for everyone in the smartphone play but Android also offers something of pending interest. Symbian remains lurking... Nokia what are they doing?

As soon as Apple rolled out its preview of iPhone OS 3.0, the comparisons to existing (and forthcoming) mobile OSs started flying. While the major update isn't exactly a done deal, it's pretty far along, and we've been able to glean quite a bit from our time with the developer beta we've been checking out. iPhone OS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, S60; if you're in the market for a new smartphone, your choices have been getting exponentially more complicated lately, and 3.0 won't make the selection any easier. Luckily for you, Engadget is here to make sense of a frightening and uncertain landscape. Read on for an in-depth look at the similarities -- and differences -- between modern mobile operating systems.

Friday, March 13, 2009

This table pretty much speaks for itself as a snapshot of the year in smartphones that was 2008 (according to Gartner) -- a breakout year for the category particularly in the US. As you'd expect from the smartphone device tallies we saw yesterday, RIM and Apple have the momentum largely at the expense of Symbian's declining market share and the stagnation of Windows Mobile in an otherwise growing market segment. Palm's also a bit of a surprise showing 42.2% growth for the year. With any luck, Palm could turn this table upside down in 2009 with a successful global launch of WebOS. Regardless, you can bet that developers are paying particularly close attention to these numbers as they decide where to best align their resources for maximum financial gain.

Those who thought anything but touch would be the future of cell phones must be feeling pretty stupid right now, as Samsung has got the right numbers to prove them wrong. The Korean manufacturer has recently announced that it has now sold over 5 million units of its popular touchscreen cellphone, the F480 TouchWiz, worldwide and is still shipping out almost 500,000 of these finger favorites every month. It looks like the TouchWiz UI turned out to be a huge success for Samsung and let’s not forget the fact that the F480 was the first handset to sport it.

We will have to wait and see what kind of figures Samsung will come up with once it starts selling smartphones with that sweet combination of Android and touch we like.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

STOCKHOLM -(Dow Jones)- Worldwide smartphone sales grew 3.7% on the year to 38.1 million units in the fourth quarter 2008, research firm Gartner said Wednesday.Gartner research director Roberta Cozza said growth slowed in the fourth quarter due to fewer compelling new products and the worsened economic climate.As a proportion of all mobile device sales, smartphones remained relatively stable at 12% in the fourth quarter, compared to 11% a year earlier.Nokia Corp. (NOK) maintained its market-leading position in the quarter. However, its market share fell to 40.8% from 50.9%, and its smartphone sales declined 17% to 15.6 million units.Research In Motion (RIMM), the maker of Blackberry smartphones, increased its market share to 19.5% from 10.9%, as its sales grew 85% to 7.4 million units.Apple's (AAPL) market share increased to 10.7% from 5.2%, as its sales more than doubled, to 4.1 million units from 1.9 million.HTC's (2498.TW) market share grew to 4.3% from 3.7%. Its sales were up 20% at 1.6 million units.Samsung (005930.SE) had a market share of 4.2% in the fourth quarter, up from 1.8% a year earlier, as its sales increased 138% to 1.6 million units.Company Web site: www.gartner.com

Monday, March 09, 2009

The megapixel race has been declared over plenty of times before, but we're guessing that there will be more folks than ever in agreement with Olympus exec Akira Watanabe's recent statement that twelve megapixels is "enough for covering most applications most customers need." In addition to that blanket declaration, Watanabe said that Olympus has "no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System" (its line of DSLRs), adding that it would instead focus on other features like dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting. On that latter front, Watanabe predicts that autofocus could be one of the big areas of innovation in DSLRs, with current "phase detect" systems giving way to new and improved image sensor-based autofocus systems. So, what do you think? Is twelve enough, or is the more megapixels the merrier? Sound off in comments.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

If we measure how high is the 3G penetration rate per capita, not the 3G migration per total subscrber base - then we get a very different view... Italy has already 48% 3G phones per capita. So there is a 3G phone for almost half of all Italians. Now 3G is clearly a success. Note this is higher as a penetration rate for Italy, than personal computer penetration, or fixed internet penetration (per capita, not per household).So, I wanted to give our readers a look at how 3G is doing. Here are the world's leading countries, not by how many of their subscribers have upgraded to 3G, but rather, by national penetration rate of 3G per capita, ie per all human beings:

Thats the baker's dozen leading countries. All around the world. 13 countries where there is a 3G phone subscription for over a third of the population and very smoothly up the curve up to two thirds of the population. Is there any doubt that 3G is happening? That 3G is a success? That 3G will happen everywhere? (for those looking for the USA, it is at 20% - remember this is per capita, and USA lags the Industrialized World still so much, that they have not even reached the 100% national mobile phone penetration rates yet. Germany is ahead at 23%, the UK is at 32%).

The above stats from several sources including the Netsize Guide 2009, the ITU 2008 and Tomi Ahonen Almanac 2009. But yes, its been a long time coming, but the world's biggest infrastrructure investment, - and the world's biggest economic gamble - have panned out. 3G is well on its way to being a major success. But of who will end up winners and losers?

It is no longer a technology game. Like I've said for years already, the winners in 3G will be determined by services and marketing. Some of the past giants have been very slow to grasp that... And for anyone who would like to read a 2 page summary of the major stats on this industry, remember I have my free Thought Piece on Mobile in 2009. I'll be happy to send it to you, if you send me an email to tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Over all, these devices make up about 10 percent of the U.S. cell phone market and are considered likely to grow in popularity, driving people to upgrade and pay for more data to do things like download songs and send text messages. In the fourth quarter, for example, AT&T's data revenue for each subscriber rose 27 percent, to $16.30 from about $12 a year earlier.

Smartphones notwithstanding, the number of handsets sold around the world has been falling in important regions -- even before the recession. In Western Europe, there were around 191 million mobile phones sold in 2007, a figure that fell to 171 million in 2008 and is projected at 165 million in 2009, according to Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with the research firm Gartner.

In the United States, people bought 176 million handsets in 2007, and 184 million in 2008. That number will probably remain flat this year, the Gartner analyst said. She said that Europe might provide some indication of where the United States was headed because, as highly populated as America is with phones, it is still slightly behind Europe. In the fourth quarter, Nokia sold 113 million handsets, down about 15 percent from a year earlier. Samsung Electronics said worldwide cell phone demand might be down 10 percent in 2009.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. February 4, 2009 – The worldwide mobile phone market experienced an unusual downturn in the normally robust fourth quarter of 2008 (4Q08). According to IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 289.0 million units, 12.6% lower than the 330.8 million units shipped during 4Q07. For the full year 2008, vendors shipped a total of 1.18 billion units worldwide, 3.5% greater than the 1.14 billion units shipped during 2007.

Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors

Nokia gave early indications that 4Q08 would be a challenging quarter due to the economic downturn, and by quarter's end its sales for devices and services had declined nearly 27% from the previous year. In addition, Nokia took the step of reducing headcount in order to lower overall costs. But during these difficult times, Nokia spelled out the need to innovate and grow. To do this, Nokia will continue to bring the Internet onto mobile devices while also developing five interconnected services – maps, music, messaging, media, and games – for its handsets.

Samsung experienced lower sales than expected due to the global recession and saw its operating margin suffer. Despite these results, the company had strong demand for the products where it had invested its resources, particularly touchscreen-enabled phones and converged mobile devices in developed markets as well as mid-range camera phones in emerging markets. These three product segments will continue to be the company's key focus in 2009 along with improving cost competitiveness.

LG Electronics climbed into third place for the quarter and for the year, both milestones for the company. But, due to sales declines within key markets, its profit margins slid back down into the single digits for the first time since 4Q07. Looking ahead to 2009, the company will emphasize digital convergence on its handset portfolio, and will launch ten new models, including an Android phone by 2Q09. In addition, its new low-tier platform will enable the company to compete aggressively within low-end markets.

Sony Ericsson slipped to fourth place during the quarter, citing lower profitability due to ongoing corporate restructuring, higher expenses related to sales, and a less favorable product mix. Even with these negative results, the company made significant investments to compete in the coming months, most notably announcing its participation with the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) to build its converged mobile device portfolio. Next, Sony Ericsson plans to build on its expertise in music and imaging as well as harnessing the Internet to bring more integrated mobile entertainment devices. Finally, Sony Ericsson will expand its services arm now that it has launched its music service PlayNow in Sweden.

Motorola ended the quarter in fifth place, posting another quarter of operating losses driven not only by the global economic crisis, but also due to its ongoing restructuring and gaps in its product portfolio. While this is the latest chapter in Motorola's slide in the market, Co-CEO Sanjay Jha pointed out the progress made in terms of cost reduction and platform rationalization, and spoke highly of its converged mobile device innovation around Android. Moving forward, Motorola will focus its efforts on mid-range and high end devices within the Americas and China, a major departure from the company's strategy just two years ago.

Monday, February 02, 2009

US 2008 proved to be a Year of Two Halves. In the first half, mobile handset shipments happily chugged along at ~14% YoY. In the second half, 3Q handset shipments slowed to 8% before crashing into the Red in 4Q with -10%.

The underlying root cause? “Sheer fear sapped the confidence of consumers, enterprises and corporate users across the board,” says Jake Saunders, Asia-Pacific Vice-President of ABI Research. “As a result, 2008 signed out the year with 1.21 billion handsets shipped for an annual growth of 5.4%. Just a year ago we had +16%”. Market Shares:

*Nokia 38.6%

*Samsung 16.2%

*LG 8.3%

*Sony Ericsson 8.0%

*Motorola 8.3%

*RIM 1.9%

*Kyocera 1.4%

*Apple iPhone 1.1%

*HTC 1.1%

*Sharp 1.0%

*Other 14.1%

2008 was very much a Year of Winners and Losers:

* The largest gainer in market-share was Samsung with an increase of +2.7% (2008: 16.2%). Samsung had a faultless four quarters, driven by handsets such as the Omnia and Ultra series.

* The next significant gainer was Nokia with +1.8% (38.6%). Most of those gains, however, were secured in the first half of the year. Market-share started to slide in the second half and 4Q in particular as emerging market growth stalled.

* LG secured a +1.5% increase for an 8.3% share, in particular gaining significant traction in the North American market.

* “While those three manufacturers dominate the global market, it probably would not come as a surprise to many that RIM (Blackberry) and Apple (iPhone) boldly moved up in the market-share stakes with growths of 0.9% and 0.8% respectively,” notes Kevin Burden, Practice Director for Mobile Devices. Despite the tough economic climate, these two players are likely to continue their march to the consumer centre-stage but it in a way that does not drop their handset ASPs to bargain basement levels. HTC was late entering the consumer smartphone market with the Android-based G1, but the vendor has significant contracts in place (such as T-Mobile) which should play to the its advantage in 2009.

* The vendor with the most significant loss in market-share was Motorola with –5.1% in 2008 (8.3%). This is an improvement on 2007 in which the firm suffered a –7.8% drop, but it underscores the urgency for Sanjay Jha and Motorola’s senior management to deliver robust selling products in 2009. It will be a tough year for Motorola but it needs to deliver handsets that draw back the once faithful Motorola purchaser before it is truly too late. The challenge is that purchasers in 2009 will be very, very picky.

* Sony-Ericsson also stumbled in the mid part of 2008 with a -0.7% contraction in market-share. The release of Experia 1X in 4Q and related smartphone products could help the vendor improve market share in 2009.

“Sharp revisions to country-by-country economic conditions in the space of just three months will likely mean that a YoY handset shipment contraction of between -5% and -10% is becoming a distinct possibility,” concludes Saunders. “What is certain is that handset vendors will be trying to convince everyone they should own a smartphone. Welcome to the Year of Smartphone”.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

A report released Wednesday from ABI Research said handsets with GPS will continue to grow thanks to attractive new smartphones and the spread of location-based services.

The new report, titled "GPS-Enabled Handsets," said GPS-enabled phones are expected to hit 240 million units in 2009, an increase of about 6.4% from 2008. Analysts, cell phone companies, and industry watchers expect the overall mobile phone market to decline 4% to 8%.

"As the quality of positioning technology in handsets improves and the cost of including it declines, GPS location technology will approach the status of a standard device feature," said senior analyst George Perros in a statement. "We are approaching the point where location awareness will be synonymous with smart devices, a point where personal navigation, social spatial knowledge, and location-specific contextual information will be assumed handset capabilities."

High-profile handsets like Apple's iPhone 3G, Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s T-Mobile G1, Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)'s BlackBerry Bold and Storm, Palm's Pre, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK)'s N Series all have GPS capabilities, and so will most of the popular smartphones moving forward. The report said the annual shipping rate of smartphones with GPS will increase by 19% through 2014.

The report also said one of the main drivers of growth will be applications and services that take advantage of a user's location, a market that is expected to balloon into a $13.3 billion business by 2013. ABI makes special mention of Google's Android

Glenn over at Anything Geo has a survey started on Sunday the 25th January and I would ask you to add your vote.... Currently Garmin is out used over Trimble 2:1 and smartphone GPS is 3x the use over Trimble and Garmin combined?

Some interesting early results from a poll we recently launched asking what kind of GPS people are currently using for work… seems Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Garmin are at the top of the responses so far. You can respond to the poll question HERE

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Market research in poorly defined emerging markets is frustrating as well as expensive. GPS is of interest to me and IMS Research, a supplier of market research and consultancy services on a wide range of global electronics markets, follows GPS and the market place forces that influence the general marketplace. IMS and others create any number of great reports that can be bought that can help explain trends and situations within sectors of industry. The many-paged reports can also cost many thousands of dollars but if they confirm and refine hard to establish market organization, trends, and likely competitive factors, they are well worth their fees. If you can not afford the full report, the same companies tend to release via press releases enough detail to understand the macros. (Whew - that disclosure behind)...

I went looking through their press releases to see what sort of insight they were sharing. I found several interesting teasers that make even more sense when arranged together? I have tried to weave their content from several "report teasers" to flesh-in how the general GPS market place is moving. GPS that once was the domain of many tens of thousand of dollars for a system that in current mass-application chip terms is now more accurate and may fetch on a several dollar fee. As GPS has passed from its military use to land survey and now to the millions if not soon billions massive new opportunities are emerging. Essentially not only is Nokia likely the world's number one camera integrator and quickly becoming the world's number one GPS integrator. And that simple reality has more or less diminished Kodak, killed Polaroid, and shifted the fortunes of established GPS chip designers to new comers.

What comes next is content from the several report links from IMS press releases merged to form I believe an interesting story?

With media attention currently focused on GPS-enabled cellular handsets and PNDs, the potential of emerging vertical markets for GPS and location services are going unnoticed by many.A bumper Christmas market is set to make GPS the hottest new feature in the cellular market. Taking the huge CDMA GPS market aside, GPS-enabled handsets are set to greatly outnumber PND shipments in 2008.GPS chips and other location technologies are being included in markets such as laptops, digital cameras and game consoles. Tom Arran, Market Analyst at IMS Research covering these GPS markets, said “GPS is a hot technology at the moment and collectively these markets represent huge potential. The non-cellular GPS market is set to increase over 6 fold. However, GPS is not infallible and its proliferation is bringing indoor performance to the fore”.How all this potential is to be effected by macro economic factors is yet unknown although there are some trends that likely are part of the forcast .In the new report, “WW Market for GPS/GNSS in Portable Devices”, the GPS market is forecast to increase by over $200 million between 2008 and 2009. IMS Research Analyst, Tom Arran, states “2008 was the breakout year for GPS in mobile phones. In 2009 GPS will begin to penetrate into a range of vertical markets, such as cameras, laptops, UMPCs, sporting equipment and first responder radios. This will help to drive shipment growth of over 25% YoY”.Despite a significant increase in revenue in 2009, IMS Research believes that the best is yet to come. Arran goes on to say “2009 will not be booming year for GPS in portable devices. Looking beyond the current economic turbulence, IMS Research is forecasting the overall market for GPS to demonstrate a 21.2% CAGR between 2008 and 2013.“There is still a lot of untapped potential and the GPS market needs to mature before breaking the 500 million units per year barrier. One of the more general issues is poor performance in challenging environments. GPS manufacturers need to start seriously considering hybrid location in their offering.OEMs in these markets can use GPS to differentiate their product, while also drive new service revenue streams. Furthermore, location is emerging as a key component of future offerings from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Intel, Mozilla and Ericsson. This will enable a host of new services across all key vertical markets, which in turn will further drive the uptake of GPS”.While cellular shipments are set to outweigh PND forecasts for 2008, IMS Research believes that talk of a saturating PND market are premature. “Despite the huge success of PNDs, there is still a comparatively small installed base of users, leaving plenty of market upside. Both of these markets will continue to grow concurrently in the medium term, but importantly, they are not independent. Already, companies such as NiM, Telmap and TeleNav are seeing increasing subscription numbers for their cellular sat-nav services. Clearly this is at the expense of the PND market.Each vertical market has its own requirements, technical and cost limitations, services and opportunities. There are now a myriad of ways to implement accurate location technologies, via GPS or otherwise. IMS Research believes that companies will require a variety of different GPS, connectivity and indoor location technology combinations to address these markets effectively.In the camera market, IMS Research has felt for some time that geotagging is set to be the next big trend. Already, online communities like Panoramio are hosting over 2 million photos which have been ‘geotagged’. Embedding location technologies on cameras brings a more user friendly version to the masses, driving uptake. Arran added, “I think we will see this eventually being adopted across the whole camera market, from holiday makers to professionals. New compact cameras such as the Nikon P6000 have GPS inbuilt whilst SLR cameras have had external GPS devices since 2006. However, cameras have limited space, size and cost margins, while TTFFs must be almost instantaneous for geotagging. Looking beyond existing GPS designs, innovative approaches from Geotate (software GPS) and Air Semi (dynamic, continuous GPS) are purpose built“.

>> This is an interesting graph from IMS. It traces three estimates of smartphones and feature rich handsets. The intersection of two or three elements of successful geotagging, mapping, location, and imagery seems increasingly liley. My guesstimate would be that all touchphones will come featured to make geotagged imagery and that the large portion of the non-touch smartphones will all so make geotagged imagery. In the graph each line is 200 million "new" units per year. That signals in 2010 there will be some 300 million new units of smartphones and possibly as many as 100 million touchscreen smart phones.>>Touchscreen-equipped mobile handsets sales have been building steadily for over a year now, and a new report from IMS Research forecasts that growth will become even stronger. Although there were fewer than 30 million touchscreen phones sold in 2007, IMS Research expect that number to increase to over 230 million by 2012.There are numerous signs that touchscreens are poised to significantly increase their presence in the mobile handset market. Recent reports and announcements from the three largest mobile phone manufacturers have highlighted a trend in the increased production of phones using touch technology. In July, LG revealed that it had sold 7 million touchscreen handsets. This announcement came just five quarters after LG launched its very first touchscreen mobile phone. Showing similar success, Samsung recently released the Instinct, a full touchscreen handset, through Sprint. Just one week after the launch, Sprint announced that the Instinct had already become the best selling EV-DO device in the carrier’s history. Not to be outdone, Apple reported selling 1 million of the new 3G iPhone handsets in just the first three days of its release.According to IMS Research analyst and report author Femi Omoni, “The original iPhone was the catalyst that created this huge market interest in touchscreen phones. The fact that it was not only popular with consumers, but also helped drive data revenues proved how important touchscreen handsets can be. Now all of the network operators and handset anufacturers want a piece of the pie.”The impressive growth that IMS Research is predicting will not be driven solely by the smartphone segment either. According to the IMS Research report Touchscreens & Input Technologies for Mobile Handsets, touchscreens will increasingly penetrate the much larger feature phone segment. In fact, Nokia just announced that its initial foray into the touchscreen market will be targeted at the “volume market” because that segment of the population is the largest consumer of mobile phones.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Over the last couple of years I have tried to document the impact adding GPS into most smartphones is going to have or having on the major manufacurers of GPS parts, piences and products. Essentially GPS World is preparing the industry for likely consolidation?

"In all, about six to eight major retailers accounted for the majority of GPS/PND sales last year...."

2008 started out sunny and warm as I remember. We all said goodbye to 2007 and a holiday buying spree that exceeded all expectation. With a new year of windfall profits behind them, GPS manufacturers, their shareholders, analysts and investors were confident 2008 would be even better. There were two types of disasters in 2008, however: no. 1 (self inflicted) was created by poor management, over valuation, and lack of insight. The second disaster can be attributed to the general economic market collapse of 2008

In the professional .land use products market, mentioned early, companies suffered setbacks as their main business of productivity solutions targeted the slumping construction, mining ,and utility infrastructure segment. Trimble was seen to tumble in the disaster no. 2 scenario. Although times were tougher, the companies key executives tended to spend a lot of time fine tuning their own compensation packages and stock programs while facing some early heat this year about the reasoning behind the stock repurchase plan, which was used to prop up the stock price. But they know the value of being low key and that accounts for a lot these days.

According to a select group industry watchers, times will be tough for the PND. "This PND space is absolutely going in the crapper," said Jeff Evanson, an analyst at Dougherty & Co. Evanson sees several factors leading to a "dramatic slowdown" in PND sales, including a lack of innovation in PND products for holiday season, signs of market saturation, and competition for consumer spending.